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http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2009/3/22/uc-berkeley-starcraft-class-week-8.html
A Crazy Trick
Professor Feng surprised many students with this strange trick. Build an assimilator (or your race's gas extractor building) on the enemy gas geyser. On the most straightforward level, this can act as a scout if you built it at their expansion before they do. If your building is destroyed, you know they expanded. But the trick is to assign a hotkey to this gas-building. Then AFTER it is destroyed, you can press that hotkey exactly ONE time to go back to the gas geyser. When you do this, you can see the amount of gas left, even though you don't have vision to the area anymore. If you kept track of how much gas was there before, you'll know if the enemy has started mining gas there, and how much exactly they have mined. If you keep your vision there for a moment, you can even see the RATE at which the gas is being collected, so you'll know if they have only one probe, or two, or three mining there. Remember that you only have one hotkey press to use here; after your building is destroyed, the hotkey becomes unassigned after that one press. Crazy!
I never knew about this. Pretty cool.
![[image loading]](/userpoll/draw.php?poll_id=5466)
Poll: I knew (be honest)
(Vote): yea
(Vote): no
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Damn... that would be so useful in PvT. Does it work if you build an assimilator then cancel it? Because you could tell exactly what he was up to.
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woah pretty sick!! i would also like to know if this works after canceling the assimilator. guess the best way is to find out for myself.
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This blew my mind.
On second thought, it doesn't seem very practical, as it can severely mess up your build order in the early game. Mid-game, maybe you can use it to see if they took an expo, but scouting does the same without using 100 minerals.
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Nope, did not know this trick at all. Pretty crazy, I'll try it sometime. It is kind of hard to determine what they are doing that late in the game though depending on when they get their 2nd gas. Or at least it is for me. Most Terrans and Protosses get them at about the same time no matter what they are doing AFAIK. Perhaps it would help in TvZ or PvZ to tell whether he is doing 3 hatch muta or 3 hatch lurk or whatever? Don't you get your 2nd gas a little latter when you go lurks instead of muta or something? Would some Zerg shed some light on that?
Also, do you have to finish building the Refinery as Terran, or can you just start it, halt construction, and send your SCV somewhere else?
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Wow they can see gas usage? And they call scanners map hack?
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I just tried to copy this and it didn't work. Can anybody recreate this on Iccup?
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wow thats pretty insane, this would be really useful pvt on 2 base maps like desti when u gas rush terran almost every game
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also didn't work for me :S
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I only know how to steal gas, never knew u can check the opponent's gas
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Wow, if this works, you will never be off guard against a 2 fac again.
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Didn't work for a group of my friends that tried it with all three races, both canceling and letting it be killed by our opponent. Something else that needs to be done before it works?
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This could really be helpful in PvZ where speedlings block your scouting probe..
if you press that one hotkey at the appropriate time, it may indicate what the zerg's up to.. hm i'll try this on iccup today!
thanks.
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i also tried it but it didnt work ;p
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Wow, wdf? I sense this is going to get patched. This isn't even a trick, just an exploit, if you will. That's amazing just as much as it is imba.
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maybe the reason 92% of tl.net-ers haven't heard of this trick is that it doesn't work 
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United States12607 Posts
So we have 3 people posting that this trick doesn't actually work - can anyone do it, or is this just BS?
Also, if it is true that this trick does not work, then those 5 people that voted "yeah, I knew about this" are going to look reeeeeally dumb.
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This is so useless... Waste an entire hotkey to see how much gas they have mined? I'd say almost every game you play you know when they have expanded, and gas timing is varied a lot, it will probably screw you up becasue you just think OMFG FAST TECH immediatly which is not necessarily true. It costs you money to cancel the building, and requires you to move your worker to that spot, thus wasting valuable harrass/scouting time.
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if it does work (which it seems like it doesnt) how would it be useless? your wasting 1 key early game when your not even going to be using all of your 10 keys for like 1-2 minutes
On April 08 2009 11:08 ThE_OsToJiY wrote:
It costs you money to cancel the building, and requires you to move your worker to that spot, thus wasting valuable harrass/scouting time.
and i dont understand this part because i though that all you had to do was build the gas and key it and then when it died you just had to press the key and youd get the gas count only once.. right?
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just tried it on single player (thinking maybe he mixed up single player and multiplayer, like the critter clicking nuke thing), but that doesn't work either
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this seems more like an exploit than anything else.
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I might try it......o_o, tho how often is it to know when ur opponent took ur gas? Im not sure if its worth the hotkey, and the amount of attention..
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well, i'm assuming that the guy demonstrated the trick to the class in order to surprise the students, as the article says. so the article probably left out something that needs to be done.
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To the OP, if they destroy the geyser building, how do you know they expanded?
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That could be somewhat useful in knowing whether or not the T is going for a 2 rax all-in scv/rine rush in response to my gas steal or if they are going to play it normal.
I'll have to test this. I kinda doubt it works.
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thats a cool trick, i don't think it is worth using up a precious hotkey though.
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In early game, you definitely have hotkeys open.
This would be pretty useful for PvT to guess how many facts one's opponent is going based on how fast he's mining gas / when he resumes gas after first fact.
Neat trick! Hope someone can get this to work.
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lol, who in the fucking world is going to have all 10 hotkey spots in use during the first seven minutes of the game?
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On April 08 2009 13:07 koreasilver wrote:
lol, who in the fucking world is going to have all 10 hotkey spots in use during the first seven minutes of the game?
I was wondering the same damn thing honestly.
Precious hotkeys? IN the first 5 minutes of the game I usually have maybe 6 hotkeys used, that leaves 4 to use this trick.
I also find it funny how blatantly people are underestimating how VALUABLE it is to know exactly how much gas has been mined. You could cut their potential build orders in HALF just by knowing gas timing.
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People say dumb shit all the time. Oh no! My PRECIOUS hotkey. I can't use that hotkey for something important like-oh wait, I'm not using that hotkey anyway.
Regardless, it seems like this "trick" is bullshit anyway.
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Would be better if you could just keep your initial scout alive.
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I didn't know about that, but it doesn't seem very practical.
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It is very practical!
the only problem is.. i can't get it to work.
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Does kespa even know of this trick? If it works that is.
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yeah honestly i have 5 hotkeys used max early game.
5,6,7 to hatches and 2/3 to different lings. and 1 as a drone scout.
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Cool if it works, though a lot of people are saying it doesn't.
I'll bet they left out a step or something.
Also a huge lol at the idiots saying "not worth wasting a precious hotkey for"
First off this is early game, and secondly from my experience (I check hotkeys on every single game after I play, so I have a lot of experience seeing general players' hotkey usage) most players don't use all 10 hotkeys in most games they play, especially not in the first couple minutes.
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just tried it, didn't work. what a huge let-down.
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it doesn't work
someone should put up a YouTube video of it working as proof
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is there a step like "turn hacks on" missing from instructions
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Kentor
United States5784 Posts
Wtf you guys? Can you guys be a little more skeptical instead of saying "WOW WTF SO COOL!@#@!"
I tried this and it doesn't work. He got my hopes up and what a big let down. Don't even argue about the practicality please. Argue whether it works or not first.
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The wya this is worded, I feel like it's like this.
1) Build a gas
2) When they destroy the gas, they almost immediately build a refinery/extractor on there for gas. If so, what you do is hotkey the opponent's building?
Not entirely sure. This is badly worded.
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Wow, amazing that you can measure how much gas he has mined off his nat. This will really stfu all those zergs who think scan is map hack.
-_-
Wtf do they teach in those classes? lol.
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Kau
Canada3500 Posts
Tried it twice and it didn't work. Once with vision and once without vision of the geyser in question. Both times with the enemy refinery completed.
However, if you build an assimilator on your gas, hotkey it, kill it, then rebuild it, the hotkey stays.
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Zurich15355 Posts
I have never heard of this trick. It would be amazing if this would actually work but apparently it doesn't. Maybe it's been patched? Or maybe Sirlin just got it wrong or misunderstood something?
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I didn't know it but voted accidently on 'yea'. Sorry, the mouse at the library is pretty crazy
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Hmm is it really that useful? As a protoss player, once you steal gas to terran most of their builds become nonstandard since they switch to some marines or biomech rush. So I don't see the point of knowing the gas they have mined if they are not doing the usual FD, seige expand or 2 fac push.
So yeah, if it works it's a neat trick but not entirely useful...
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On April 08 2009 17:41 zatic wrote:
I have never heard of this trick. It would be amazing if this would actually work but apparently it doesn't. Maybe it's been patched? Or maybe Sirlin just got it wrong or misunderstood something?
Yea, I'm thinking there was either a step that Sirlin ignorantly overlooked or he completely misunderstood what he was saying. I dunno, maybe he meant if the geyser is killed/cancelled at the last second or something.
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United States4991 Posts
I registered and posted on their (i.e., Sirlin's) forum asking about it. Hopefully I didn't post in the wrong place, but I have a suspicion I did 
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whats the story with this
we need more clarification or at the least a video confirming it can be done
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
This doesn't work, I just tried it. If anyone has any CONCLUSIVE evidence that this works, pm me else i'll keep closing this.
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
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EPT
